A Rest For My Chest

Wednesday afternoon I started to notice a familiar pain developing in my chest. For 6 or 7 years, I've had these unexplained periods of chest pain. I'll have a day of my chest feeling odd and then 3-4 days of pain along my sternum. The first time it happened, I thought I was having a heart attack. I've had all kinds of tests run and no one has been able to diagnose it. The best that doctors have been able to tell me is that my heart seems fine and they haven't found anything life threatening.

The pain comes and goes in basically the same amount of time. It's probably only happened 5 or 6 times in 7 years and it's been a while since my last occurance. I don't even go to the doctor for it anymore, I just wait it out.

At this point, I'm pretty convinced it's either muscular (some kind of strain) or a respiratory problem. I have a slight deformity in my chest muscle. It doesn't seem to affect me but for all I know, it could be related to this weird pain. The reason I suspect a respiratory problem is that the pain is dead center on my chest and hurts more when I inhale deeply.

I'm not always good about following my own advice. I tend to run through things I would suggest other people rest for. If Liz were experiencing pain like this, I would definitely recommend she take a break from training and not push it (and probably to see a doctor). I decided that it was better to have a brief interruption in my training to get past this than to try pushing through it and end up having to take a full week off.

So I skipped my workouts yesterday and today. So far, it seems to be helping and I feel better today than I did yesterday. I don't know if I'll try sneaking in a few easy miles tomorrow morning or if I'll just plan to pick up my training with a Long Run on Sunday.

I've been more consistent than usual with my training so far. I've been working hard at the speedwork. I'm trying to be smart about my training this time around and I think taking a couple of days off is the best thing to do right now.

Thursday & Friday
Goal For The Day: Rest and Recover.

Daily Miles: 0.00 Miles.
Blog Totals:
  Run - 148.84 Miles.
  Bike - 67.68 Miles.
  Swim - 4,450+ meters.